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The 15^th IFIP World Computer Congress was organised by the Austrian and Hungarian Computer Societies at the end of August 1998 in Vienna and Budapest. The Congress was entitled The Global Information Society on the way to the next millennium and consisted of seven conferences.

In particular, the ICCHP '98 - 6th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, was concerned with all aspects of the use of computers by people with disabilities. That includes both the adaptation of the human-computer interface to enable the person to access the computer for everyday use and the development of computer-based aids to reduce the handicapping effect of the disability.

The Kepler University and EC-JRC-ISIS co-ordinators presented the VOICE Project and the invited speaker presented the new development of voice to text recognition and other projects related to the field.

The demonstrator was presented and discussed. It was used for live subtitling of the speech of the Kepler University and EC-JRC-ISIS co-ordinators.

The organisation of the workshop was ensured primarily by Kepler University, with the collaboration of IHSB. EC-JRC-ISIS and SoftSol ensured the good transfer of the demonstrator from Ispra to Linz. Particular attention had to be paid to the hardware and software installations for the use of the demonstrator (PC, projection screens, video-cameras, magnetic field amplification), as well as in training the speakers and the interpreters in the use of the demonstrator.

ICCHP-98 special topics: theory and practice in assistive technology; communication without barriers; multi-modal interaction; mobility and human environment; special education; work; elderly people.

The idea of using speech recognition for the hearing impaired and the deaf for these topics at ICCHP was presented and discussed at three levels:

1. Papers: needs of the user group, social aspects; technical aspects and the state of the art; possible areas of application; research areas; (attendance: more than 100 participants);
2. Poster: examples of good practice; prototype and ideas of the usage of the technology; the VOICE Project; the co-operation with TV stations;
3. Workshop: state of the art of speech recognition; discussion of the user needs; promoting research and development; (attendance: more than 65 (!) participants).

Additionally, the first meeting of the Special Interest User Group was held after the VOICE workshop.

This deliverable is composed of the following papers:

• Three scientific papers submitted to ICCHP '98:
• The VOICE project (PART 1) (accepted and presented)
• Hardware configuration and software developments (accepted and presented)
• The communication needs of the deaf (not accepted; fed into papers 1 and 2)
• Concept and protocol of the VOICE workshop
• Protocol of the User Group Meeting
• VOICE Poster

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